#long live the palestinian revolution

[her-moth]

from Scenes of the Occupation from Gaza, a short film by Abu Ali Mustafa, 1973

[down-the-rabbith0le]

[chaiaurchaandni]

white american liberals love seeing poc as victims who constantly have to beg for a shred of white liberals' attention so they may throw some solidarity our way. the moment we refuse to audition for their sympathy and instead empower ourselves to fight back directly against our oppressors, these same liberals are not so comfortable with the idea of us as victims or innocents - how dare we resist or have our own agency? if a poc takes up a rifle after seeing their entire family be killed, and then is bombed by the killers for fighting back against the killers, then is that poc a victim? oh but how could they be? - they had a gun. the gun becomes our symbol of liberation and hope, not mindless vengeance, but as a means for the destruction of the power structures that our oppressor rests on. stop prefacing your support of poc with condemnations of our resistance. negotiations will never free oppressed people because our oppressors do not have a conscience. you cannot reason with somebody who thinks you are inherently worth less. resistance is the only way forward.

remember that the violence of the oppressed is in no way morally equivalent to the violence of the oppressor. and the oppressed do not have to justify the means of our resistance to the oppressors / the sympathizers of the oppressors.

[beatrix-morrigan]

Open Letter to My Computer Science Students In the Wake of the Temporary Restraining Order

A TA at UCSD reflects on the unprecedented temporary restraining order granted against UAW 4811 's spring 2024 strike, and how CS is fueling modern genocide.

https://beatrix-morrigan.github.io/writing/in-the-wake-of-the-TRO.html

[violottie]

"No sugarcoating the Palestinian cause to make it palatable for Westerners. We don’t want peace—we want freedom. We don’t want to live side-by-side, we want the settlers to leave our land. There’s no conversation to be had. The demand is clear—we want to return to our home. We don’t negotiate with terror!sts. Long live the Palestinian revolution. ✌🏼🔻🇵🇸"

from sbeih.jpg, 01/Apr/2024:

[etz-ashashiyot]

I know I'm gonna regret posting this, but I just can't not say something: I'm so sick of people who are actively contributing to the ongoing oppression of and violence against Palestinians calling themselves "pro-Palestinian."

In the same way that so many people in the anti-abortion movement are actually pro forced birth rather than pro-child, there are a lot of you who aren't pro-Palestinian, you're just violently antisemitic or in it for yourselves.

If you aren't:

Also angry with the other countries that abuse their Palestinian populations, refuse them citizenship, keep them in displaced person camps under horrific conditions, and/or close their borders entirely to them;

In support of genuine grassroots movements that aim to create some kind of stability, peace, and safety through diplomatic relationships and community building, because that's ""normalization"";

Willing to condemn antisemitism in the diaspora, which helps fuels right-wing rhetoric in Israel;

Willing to shut down lies, propaganda, and disinformation even if it "supports" Palestinians in theory, because lying repeatedly associates the Palestinian movement with lying and makes it harder for survivors to tell their actual stories and be believed outside of the far left movements (and also the truth is bad enough - there's no need to lie);

Willing to focus on practical problem solving over political posturing, especially when it will save Palestinian lives;

Willing to condemn Hamas, which started this most recent disaster, steals aid meant for civilians, uses civilians as human shields, and has been torturing dissenters for years;

Willing to work with Israeli leftists who hate their current government and want peace and full equality for Arab Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors, and also have the best shot at making that change happen; and/or,

Willing to learn about Palestinians as living human beings and value their lives over using them as a political cudgel, whatever that looks like on the ground;

.............then maybe you're more interested in looking radical and jerking off to some fantastical version of The Revolution, and/or hurting Jews than you are in promoting peace, safety, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians.

Like seriously with "friends" like these, do they even need enemies??

Anyway you should call out the Israeli government for its very real abuses of Palestinians and nothing in this post should be construed otherwise. But if you genuinely care and aren't just in it for internet cool points or leftist cred or feeding your Jew-hate boner or whatever, you gotta prioritize solutions that have a realistic shot at short-term relief and long-term possibility over whatever fits some idealistic goal that will only ever end with more dead Palestinians.

[mariacallous]

The great fault of the global left is not that it supports Hamas. For how could Western left-wing movements or left-inclining charities or academic bodies truly support Hamas if they were serious about their politics?

No one outside the most reactionary quarters of Islam shares Hamas’s aim of forcing the peoples of the world to accept “the sovereignty of Islam” or face “carnage, displacement and terror” if they refuse.  You cannot be a progressive and campaign for a state that executes gay men. An American left, which includes in its ranks the Queers for Palestine campaign group, cannot seriously endorse lethal homophobia in its own country.  They will turn a blind eye in Palestine, as we shall see, but not in New York or Chicago.

Finally, no left organisation proudly honours the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the fascist tradition that Hamas embraces with such sinister gusto, although in a sign of a decay that has been building on the left for more than a generation, many will promulgate left-wing conspiracy theories which are as insane as their fascist counterparts.

No, the problem with the global left is that it is not serious about politics. It “fellow travels” with radical Islam rather than supports it. The concept of “fellow travelling,” with its suggestions of tourism, dilettantism, and privilege, is well worth reviving. The phrase comes from the Bolsheviks. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 they looked with appreciation on Westerners who supported them without ever endorsing communism. Artists, writers, and academics who were disgusted with the West, often for good reason, I should add, were quite happy to justify Soviet communism and cover up its crimes without ever becoming communists themselves.

Leon Trotsky put it best when he said of fellow travellers that the question was always “how far would they go”? As long as they did not have live under the control of communists in the 1920s or the control of Islamists in the 2020s, the answer appears to be: a very long way indeed

W.H. Auden said, as he looked back with some contempt on his fellow travelling past, if Britain or the United States or any country he and his friends knew were taken over by a “successful communist revolution with the same phenomena of terror, purges, censorship etc., we would have screamed our heads off”. But as communism happened in backward Russia “a semi-barbarous country which had experienced neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment”, they could ignore its crimes in the interests of seeing the capitalist enemy defeated.

You see the same pattern of lies and indulgence in the case of Hamas. Journalists  have produced a multitude of examples of fellow travelling since 7 October but let one meeting of the Oakland City Council in the Bay area of San Francisco speak for them all.

A council member wanted the council to pass a motion that condemned the killings and hostage-taking by Hamas, who, in case we forget, prompted the war that has devastated Gaza, by massacring Israeli civilians. The motion got nowhere

According to one speaker Hamas did not massacre anyone, a modern variant of Holocaust denial that is becoming endemic. “There have not been beheadings of babies and rapings,” a woman said at the meeting. “Israel murdered their own people on October 7.”  Another woman said that calling Hamas a terrorist organization is “ridiculous, racist and plays into the genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media.” Hamas was the “armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance” , said a third who clearly had no knowledge of the civil war between Hamas and Fatah.

“To condemn Hamas was very anti-Arab racist” cried a fourth. The meeting returned to modern Holocaust denial as a new speaker said the Israeli Defence Forces had murdered their own people and it was “bald propaganda” to suggest otherwise. A man intervened to shout that “to hear them complain about Hamas violence is like listening to a wifebeater complain when his wife finally stands up and fights back”.  

Anyone who contradicted him was a “white supremacist.”

Of course they were.

Now if theocrats were to establish an Islamist tyranny in the Bay area, I am sure every single speaker would scream their heads off, as Auden predicted. They can turn into fellow travellers as there is no more of a prospect of theocracy threatening them than there was of communism threatening readers of the left-wing press in the UK and US in the 1930s.

A serious left would have plenty to complain about. Consider the Israeli position after the breakdown of the ceasefire. The Israeli state is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a catastrophe of a prime minister, who left his people exposed to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. His war aims are contradictory: you cannot both wipe out Hamas and free the hostages.

Worst of all, the Israeli defence forces are to move to the southern Gaza strip where two million Palestinians are crammed. Just war doctrine holds that a military action must have a reasonable chance of success if the suffering is to be permitted. How, reasonably, can the Israeli army expect to find guerilla fighters hiding in a terrified population?  According to leaks in the Israeli media, Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of state, was warning the Israeli government that, “You can’t operate in southern Gaza in the way you did in the north. There are two million Palestinians there.” But he was ignored.  A radical movement worth having would surely be putting pressure on the Biden administration to force Israel to listen to its concerns.

The radical movement we have will not engage in practical politics because compromise is anathema to it. Any honest account of the war would have to admit that Israel has the right to defend itself against attack. It is just that the military position it finds itself in now may well make its war aims impossible and therefore immoral.

You can see why practical politics has no appeal. Where is the violent satisfaction in sober analysis,  the drama in compromise? Where is the Manichean distinction between the absolute good of the Palestinians and the pure evil of Israel?  

Meanwhile, ever since the Israeli victory in the Six Day War of 1967, you have been able to say that Jewish settler sites on the West Bank were placed there deliberately to make a peace settlement impossible, and ensure that Israel controlled all the territory from “the river to the sea” forever.

A serious left might try to revive a two-state solution by building an international consensus that the settlements must go. Once again, however, that is too tame an aim. For the fellow traveller watching Palestine from a safe distance, satisfaction comes only by embracing Hamas’s call for the destruction of Israel. Some progressives try to dress up the urge to destroy by pretending that Jews and Palestinians will go on to live together in some happy-clappy, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state. But most must know they are advocating a war to the death. What makes their position so disreputable is that, if they thought about it calmly, they would know it would be a war that only Israel could win. It is the Israelis who have the nuclear weapons, after all.

The worst of the global left is dilettantish. It advocates a maximalist position which has a minimal chance of success - just for the thrill of it. David Caute, a historian of fellow travelling with Stalin and communism said that the endorsement of communism by fellow travelling intellectuals in the West “deepened the despair” of Soviet intellectuals. “In their darkest hours they heard themselves condemned by their own kind”.

The 2020s are not the 1930s. I am sure that, if I were a Palestinian in Gaza, my sole concern would be the removal of Israeli forces that threatened me and my family. I would either not care about demonstrations in the West or I would receive some comfort from the knowledge that people all over the world were protesting on my behalf.

Nevertheless, a kind of betrayal is still at work. By inflaming and amplifying the worst elements in Palestine the global left is giving comfort to the worst elements in Israel, which are equally determined to make a compromise impossible.

The New Statesman made that point well when it ran a piece by Celeste Marcus.   She came from the Zionist far right, and was taught doctrines that dehumanised Palestinians. She grew up and grew away from the prejudices of her childhood and became a liberal. But after she moved into her new world, she “recognised immediately that progressive leftists feel about Israelis the way radical Zionists feel about Palestinians: these are not real people.”

The result is that for all its power on the streets and in academia the global left is almost an irrelevance.

“To influence Israel,” she writes, “one must be willing to recognise it. Since leftist leaders cannot bother to do this, they cannot be of real use to Palestinians. This is a betrayal of their own cause.”

The dilettantism of fellow travelling always ends in betrayal and denial for the reason Auden gave: terror is always more tolerable when it happens far, far away.

[mossadspypigeon]

the pro palestine obsession with “armed resistance,” needs to be studied under a microscope.

“there is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

“resistance is justified when people are occupied.”

both of these catchy little chants display a laughable lack of knowledge, but let’s discuss the second one in particular tonight.

the people screaming it truly don’t know:

a. jewish history

b. what occupation or resistance are.

israel is jewish land. it always has been. it’s where judaism and the jewish people come from. it has been conquered and occupied by oppressors—british, arab, turk, persian, babylonian, greek, roman, byzantine—for over 3,000 years. no matter how hard they try, no matter how badly they wish they could make us disappear, the jew hating world cannot erase that history.

as established, jews are a historically colonized and occupied people. so why then is our resistance not justified? because we have better weapons? because of lies that say we are in power?

who has been IN LESS POWER throughout history, around the world, than jews? (no this is not an oppression olympics thing). when we had israel and judea the first time, empires couldn’t leave us alone. after, we have been dragged from our homeland in chains, enslaved in some places and stripped of rights and humanity in most others, raped, mass burnt, genocided, stolen from, attacked, relegated to humiliating professions, not able to own land, corralled like animals into ghettos and the pale and mellahs (the arab version of a ghetto), massacred, treated like scum, slandered, demonized, villainized, terrorized, forced to assimilate over and over and over, systematically murdered, expelled and BANNED for no reason at all except that we live and continue to live. in every generation, they come for us because we have the audacity to exist.

the one thing we wanted, for over 2,000 years of this horror, was to return to our home. if we were in diaspora, we longed for it, we prayed for it, we wished for it, we yearned, and when we could, we returned. if we were IN israel, we suffered for it. we lived as third class not-even-citizens. we endured the crusades and the arab riots.

l’shanah haba’ah b’yerushalayim: next year in jerusalem.

we have never stopped hoping. and now that we have it back, now that it is ours again, now that we offered peace deal after peace deal and gave up parts of our own ancestral land just so people who hate us will leave us be… the world tells us that the continuation of jew hatred, of the nazis and their ancestors, of all of our oppressors, of the horror we have endured around the world for centuries, is ACTUAL resistance?

that, essentially, what was done to us by the romans, the arabs, the turks, the babylonians, the persians, the russians, the syrian greeks, the church, the spanish, the nazis, etc etc etc…was always justified because it was “resisting” us?

because that is what the pro palestinian movement is: resistance against jews and jewish rights. that is what “from the river to the sea palestine will be free,” and its original form “from water to water palestine will be arab,” mean: NO. MORE. JEWS.

and that is what they are talking about when they use the word “resistance”: eradicating jews. aka the goal of every single oppressor we have ever had.

hitler said “my struggle.” before him, his political influences said the same. every time we were massacred, expelled, stripped of rights, “rioted” against, rounded up, the oppressor framed it as a persecuted society fighting back against the evil jews. that WE were a threat that must be purged. a “force” to be resisted.

so that is what these protestors consider liberation today: a world without jews. that is what they support and march and clamor for. that is why they hate zionism, the movement made by jews for jews, that was created to ensure we could finally have agency again. because once more, for the millionth fucking time, we are that “force” that must be resisted.

if not, then why is OUR landback movement, our decolonization called nazism?

why is our self defense lied about and called genocide? why is our own oppression used against us?

why are we constantly painted as the aggressor?

why is our history stolen and our indigeneity denied? why are we told to “go back to europe”?

why do they insist on calling their precious “palestine,” the name COLONIZERS gave to the region?

why is it okay to change the truth when jews are involved?

if not, why is israel called an apartheid colonialist project?

jews, who do not have a history of colonization. who were a vulnerable people, most of our population forcibly displaced and prevented from returning to our land, living at the mercy of people who hated us for centuries. we are oppressing the people who were our oppressors. who conquered our land, built their third holiest site on the RUINS of our holiest? who want us wiped from the earth and driven into the sea? who, after they destroy israel, g-d forbid, want to hunt down jews everywhere?

if the pro palestinian crowd is not “resisting” jews, then why do they target synagogues and jewish businesses?

if not, then why is it that when we promise ourselves and the world “never again,” and ACT TO KEEP THAT PROMISE, we are evil? when we build an army so it will never happen again, so we will never be at the mercy of others again, that army is an “occupation force”?

when we are fired upon and return fire, we are suddenly the ones who fired first? every single time?

when our people are massacred, raped, and stolen, and we respond with force to take out the enemy that has consistently committed crimes against us for decades, that constantly threatens our eradication, we are condemned by the world?

if not, why is our side never once acknowledged? why are they so afraid of what we have to say and what we can do? of what we represent: jews they can’t step on anymore?

every lie about us is believed fully without question or second thought, simply because the right words were used, the right buttons pushed. it’s almost like everything we do is considered heinous and unjustifiable…except setting down our weapons and dying.

the world hates a strong jew, a jew who won’t give in. a jew who actually and truly resists. that is why zionism is so hated. that is why israel is the villain. that is why we have always been considered a threat, because no matter what they threw at us, we wouldn’t give up.

(that is why antizionist jews exist, btw. as a response to thousands of years of oppression, they have lain down their weapons and spiritually died for the world, at their convenience, in the hope that for once, they won’t be hurt or killed. they have given up and surrendered and turned their backs on their own people for the illusion of safety. how sad is that? how tragic? that safety simply does not exist.)

anyway, if the anti israel crowd WASN’T resisting jews and jewish rights, they wouldn’t have to manipulate the narrative, demonize the jewish land back movement, coopt and erase our history, deny our ties to the land, support the people who want us eradicated, and/or fear the truth. in fact, they wouldn’t hate israel at all.

basically: they wouldn’t find any way they could to justify a world without jews, even if they have to delude themselves to do it.

yes, assholes, “zionist,” means jew no matter how many christian zionists exist in the world. it always has.

so no, not a single person chanting that horseshit knows what occupation or resistance is, and it’s likely they never will.

oh and also, pointing out the jew hate behind the palestinian and pro palestinian movements is not hating palestinians, aka arabs. ✌️

[solarpunksoup]

PART 2: THE STEW

(aka a resource masterlist/archive from an amateur librarian)

LAST UPDATED NOVEMBER 11, 2024

PART 1: THE SOUP (disc. February 28, 2023)

disclaimer: most of these will pull up my reblog, not the original link. this is in no way me trying to take credit, but it was just easier and more efficient to get the links this way, and makes the resource still partially accessible if a blog is deactivated.

just like part one!: if you see your post on here and would like it removed or credited in a certain way, send me a message. i’m more than happy to do that!

this will be continuously updated. click the original post to check if the date has changed.

you can also search “updated version” in my blog to pull up the most recent edit

not all of these are direct guides! a lot of this is inspiration for your own personal praxis

The Featured

some things that are particularly relevant right now or what I find most interesting

Self Managed Abortion

Managing War Anxiety

Testosterone is for Girls, Too! (zine for purchase)

Solarpunk in Different Parts of the World

Gardening + Gardening DIYs

Sharing the Fruits of Your Labor

Healthy Soil

Ani's Tomato and Pepper Harvest

Moostie's Guide to Carrot Tops

DIY [Non-Fibre]

Filtering Rainwater

Tech

Pirating Resources

uBlock Origin's Official Guide to Bypassing Youtube Anti-AdBlock

[Google] Drives

Cooking/Foraging

Scrap Soup

Random Tips for an Amateur Cook

Mending + Fibre Arts

Solar Dyeing

Making Yarn from Scratch

Inspo for Mending a Belt

Inspo for Decorating a Jacket

On Acrylic Yarn

Thought, Theory + Idea Lists

Ways to Live in Direct Opposition to Capitalism

Rural Solarpunk

Activism in the Winter Months

Social Workers, Not Cops

Importance of Trades

Solarpunk in Different Parts of the World

Boomer Positivity

Stories of Transfem Acceptance

Staying Critical of "Self-Sufficiency"

Shopping

Native Seeds Search

Volunteerism, Protesting + Community Activism

Community Fridges/Freedges

Free Little Library for MOVIES!

Nzambi Matee Recycles Plastic to Make Bricks that are Stronger than Concrete

Workplace Advocacy

A Legit Way to Fight the Climate Crisis from Where You're Sitting Right Now

Village Tackles Speeding by Planting Thousands of Flowers Because Drivers Slow Down as They Pass By

Emotional + Physical Health

First Aid for Seizures

Masterlists, Compilations

History of Specific Depopulated Palestinian Areas

UK-Specific Solarpunk Resources

Zines

Testosterone is for Girls, Too!

T-Girl Self Defense

The Shirt, (or How to Explain Revolution to an 8-year old)

a word on the soup and the stew:

hello world!

if you've made it all the way down here, hello! hi:3

welcome to a project I've been working on for many years. 3, to be exact! which may not seem that long to you, but for me, the soup started as a way for me to collect resources as an isolated, abused teenager and give me a source of hope. I think it gave me something to hoard, to call my own, even though it never really was. it was and always has been just my organization of a community's brilliance. and along the way, people seemed to like it. with this outpouring love and a community I could finally call myself apart of, I learned to let go of false ownership and instead grow a true love for archiving, for sharing.

now, I am a free, happy adult, and that time seems like forever ago. yet I continue collecting these resources and sharing our community's brilliance as an ode to that younger self, and because I still believe in the solarpunk community and it's message:

hope! keep hoping! endure! keep enduring! above all else, we must survive, we must dream, and we must LOVE!

I hope you reflect upon these with the same gentle, hopeful heart I always have. Praise the authors, love them, love yourself, and let our hope inspire you to create and act and be.

All of my love!

The Keeper

[stil-lindigo]

I gave up on the idea of revolution in this country a long time ago. Queer people can't even be assed to stop eating at Chick-fil-A. 53% of white women voters voted for Trump. Americans are too dedicated to going against their own self-interest time and time again...

okay? It’s your right to take a defeatist attitude if you want to, but I’m not going to commiserate with you after Palestinians have asked for a global strike while they’re being ethnically cleansed. You can be a part of a movement, you can recognise that the genocide in Palestine is uniting people all over the world against a fascist state in ways that are unprecedented, you can look at the wave of recent wins in unionization efforts and still hold onto hope. You can also critique people’s commitment to their own comfort, understand the lies and coddling that people who live in a capitalist society grow up with. But there’s a balance.

[traegorn]

Do you seriously think all insulin will be cut off from diabetics in a revolution? You are the dumbest cunt to ever put on a flat cap, which is stiff competition. Even if the revolutionaries are waging total war, they still have to manage logistics for civilians, and so a priority would be supplying their diabetic population with medicine to survive, or otherwise evacuating disabled civilians to places where medication would be available. Communists believe in universal healthcare. If "all supply chains collapsed" the war would be lost instantly. And while you're right that Americans would die, the us military would have to pull out from their bases across the world to put down a rebellion in their own country, meaning that it would kill fewer people abroad, and therefore fewer people overall in a hypothetical civil war versus their global wars on the third world. But those would be American lives so that's what makes it unconscionable for you. Diabetic Gazans are dying after a decades long blockade, diabetic Americans would have a fighting chance stockpiling insulin, evacuating, and/or doing logistics for the revolution.

I don't think you understand what societal collapse looks like, or how fragile the complex supply chain that provides for over 345 Million Americans is.

In fact, I was talking about this with your mom the other day. Your dad was hogtied in the corner with his ball gag in, so we had a minute or two while we were waiting for him to get an erection again.

Frankly, he needs to get more vitamin E in his diet -- but that's a discussion for another day.

Anyways, as she was undoing my cuffs, she mentioned that the US had seen a record high of drug shortages in 2024, including Insulin. If we consider how fragile that supply is in peace time and extrapolate even a low level disruption to something like, say, the ability to ship things across the midwest, we'd be looking at a deeply dangerous situation where the death toll would be enormous.

We would have kept talking, but your dad got hard again and my mouth was full with his balls.

Anyways, when "revolutionaries" are fighting a war, their priorities are going to be ammunition, clean clothes, and food for themselves. I'm dead in this revolution, and you don't seem to give a shit -- so explain why exactly I should take you seriously?

Also, as an aside, the people you claim you're fighting for don't even want you to withhold your vote. You're doing this for your own vanity and feelings, and not for the real lives of anyone else. Your parents and I are disappointed in you.

[her-moth]

I wrote an essay 'Stone and Seed', about starvation as a tool of the genocide in Gaza, for Vittles.

[dragoneyes618]

L.A.’s largest Jewish neighborhood was the site of an anti-Jewish riot on Sunday, as a pro-Hamas and Hezbollah mob attacked Jews and blocked access to a synagogue where an Israel real estate fair was taking place. At around 11 a.m., rioters gathered outside Adas Torah Synagogue in the Pico-Robertson area and came mask/kefiyyeh-to-face against Jews who had come to rally in support of Israel, responding to a call on social media to turn out after recent Israel real estate events in other cities, including Teaneck, NJ and Toronto, drew antisemitic hordes, and one in Brooklyn was preemptively canceled because police would not guarantee the safety of attendees.

LAPD riot police responded to the chaotic scene and eventually cleared the area in front of the synagogue. But what happened in between is drawing ire from Jewish community leaders.

Political consultant Noah Pollak posted on X that he was at the synagogue and that the LAPD “let the Hamas supporters take over the sidewalk in front of the shul and block its entrance. In fact, LAPD had formed a cordon around the front of the shul to keep Jews out and Hamas supporters in. I tried to enter with my kids through the front door and was turned away not by Hamas supporters but by the LAPD. Anyone who wanted to attend had to use a secret back entrance.”

Shouting now familiar slogans including “Long live the intifada!” and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” the crowd quickly grew violent, punching and shoving and weaponizing bottles, sticks, and even their sign handles to attack Jews. Bear spray was also used, including against journalist Cam Higby, who posted videos of the attack on social media.

Police made only a single arrest – for carrying a prohibited “spiked flag.” They are reportedly investigating two allegations of battery.

Echoing coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, many news outlets framed the incident as a spontaneous “brawl,” “outbreak of violence” and “violent clash” (CNN’s take was “Violent scuffles break out between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and counter protestors in Los Angeles”) – yet this was anything but a random, unforeseen occurrence. Community activist and former Los Angeles City Council candidate Sam Yebri posted on X that “these terrorists told us when and where they were coming. For a week, we pleaded with our elected leaders to speak up. Not one made a public statement condemning these extremists.” He said elected officials “told LAPD to stand down and not intervene… Fortunately, proud Jews and well-organized Jewish groups stepped up to prevent a mass casualty event and the total destruction of the Pico-Robertson.” The Palestinian Youth Movement LA and Code Pink LA were among those behind Sunday’s riot.

“It’s like the media [are] bending over backwards to be politically correct,” the founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, told The Jewish Press. “The people that appeared at the synagogue [in Los Angeles] were radical Palestinians, Arabs, others who were there to disrupt. There are no two sides to that story. There is only one side, there are the good guys, and the other, the evil guys.”

Yebri said what occurred in front of the synagogue is “a dark stain in the history of Los Angeles. Violent extremists who proudly praise Hamas and Hezbollah marched outside an Orthodox synagogue in America’s most heavily Jewish neighborhood outside of New York – where my kids go to school, where my family worships, where my family eat and shop – and brazenly terrorized Jewish Angelenos with impunity and without any consequence. These violent masked domestic terrorists bludgeoned Jews, vandalized synagogues, schools and stores, keyed cars, assaulted anyone who appeared Jewish blocked Jews from entering their synagogue, and chanted for the genocide of the Jewish people. These violent masked domestic terrorists are now dispersing into Jewish neighborhoods hunting Jews and causing more destruction and vandalism.”

Indeed, videos of so-called “Jew-hunting” on the on the streets of L.A. that same day have circulated on social media, one showing stick-wielding thugs exiting their car to attack Jews, and another showing a mass of screaming protestors, having moved on from outside the synagogue, making their way down the block of a Jewish neighborhood threatening residents.

“Pro-Hamas and Hezbollah extremists violently attacked American Jews in Los Angeles and the politicians ordered the police to do nothing to defend them,” wrote Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Radical leftists and Islamists are ruining our country.”

Late Sunday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass issued statements denouncing the morning’s violence, specifically condemning the targeting of a house of worship. President Biden also issued a statement of condemnation.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, a Jewish woman and her husband were attacked and beaten at their children’s graduation at a Brooklyn elementary school last week. Members of an Arabic-speaking family at P.S. 682 in Gravesend threw the man to the ground, grabbed his legs, and kicked and punched him. To the tune of “Free Palestine!” “Gaza is Ours!” and “Death to Israel!” the man was put in a chokehold and assaulted with a sharp stiletto heel the couple alleged.

The Jewish mom and her husband, a Dominican who is Catholic, shared their story with the New York Post after police refused to classify the incident as a hate crime. The NYPD is now investigating the incident further. “They targeted my family because we are Jewish,” said the woman, whose 10-year-old twins witnessed the assault, and whose 16-year-old was punched in the face after trying to help his father. While trying to video the assault, the mother was also attacked, pulled by her hair from behind and knocked to the ground by a woman shouting, “I will kill you.”

“The other side is saying, ‘Oh, they started it,’” Hikind said. “We in the Jewish community should be very, very concerned about the future…I say that because unfortunately, there’s no leadership as far as I’m concerned. These incidents happen, there’s no plan, there’s no plan to deal with everything going on…There are so many situations that don’t even make the news, so things are even worse than what we think they are.”

In an incident which did make the news last week, a mob of teens attacked a 41-year-old hasidic man late one night in Williamsburg with traffic cones and bottles while shouting antisemitic slurs. The NYPD hate crimes task force is investigating.

As of May 21, antisemitic crimes were up 55% in New York City compared with the same time last year – amounting to 143 incidents, according to the NYPD. Nationally, the Anti-Defamation League reported a record high of 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023 – a 140% rise over 2022 – with 5,200 of those occurring after October 7. The period of October 7 through January 7 saw a 361% rise over the previous year. Figures for 2024 are not yet available.

“There are no consequences for antisemitism,” Hikind told The Jewish Press. The message violent demonstrators get, in his words: “You’re free. Go ahead and do it tomorrow again.”

[chaiaurchaandni]

israeli military occupation and apartheid in the occupied west bank

[abla-soso]

I've said before and I'll keep saying it: Palestine exposed Western liberals and Syria exposed Western leftists.

Their unchecked racism and ideological blind spots are just as nasty as liberals..

You can easily figure out how much these Leftist Western experts on Syria don't actually know a goddamn damn thing about Syria when you ask them a simple question.

Don't ask them if they can understand Arabic, or if they have ever spoken to actual Syrians who lived through Assad's brutal regime, and how long ago they figured out where Syria is located on the map.

Don't ask why the vast majority of Palestinians are staunch supporters of the Syrian revolution. Don't ask them why Hamas has always supported Syrian rebels.

No.

Just ask them about the Assad family's very long and loving relationship with America.

Just ask them about the Assad Family's very friendly and servile relationship with Israel from the late 60's onwards. Ask them why Syria was such a good neighbor to Israel all these many decades.

Then ask them how exactly Bashir differed from his family regarding his policy towards Israel, enough for Israel to waste resources on toppling him. Bashir is still every bit an Assadist royal as his father before him.

Temporarily allying himself with Hezbollah to save his own ass (because he could no longer trust America to not replace him with another Assadist royal), doesn't fucking mean he has suddenly become anti-Israel or anti-American imperialism.

This is an utterly deranged, completely laughable "analysis" that can't be uttered by anyone familiar with the history of the Assad royal family and its loving relationship with America and Israel.

Asssad is not and has never been against America, but his main concern - after the Arab Spring - is keeping himself in power, and if that necessitated Russian and Iranian propaganda portray him as a revolutionary leader fighting against American imperialism, he'd gladly take it.

You might be ignorant enough or dumb enough to believe Russian and Iranian propaganda, but America isn't.

America knows Assad is a cowardly rat who would crawl back - after crushing the rebellion - to the biggest superpower that can secure his power. That's America and Israel.

This is why America and Israel never bothered to topple Assad the same way they toppled their other puppets in the Middle East. That is why they've only sent their terrorist mercenaries to fight off Hezbollah and Syrian rebels but never targeted Assad's forces. I was there in 2011. I saw countless videos of these US-backed terrorists fighting and slaughtering the Syrian rebels while not harming a single fucking Assad-backed fighter.

They want Assad weakened enough to crawl back to them and only rely on them for protection, but they don't want his regime or his royal family gone. They're their biggest fucking allies in the Middle East, for fuck's sake! They might get rid of Assad in the future if he proved to be too concerned with his own survival (like Gaddafi did), but they won't ever get rid of the Assad Family.

[fordtato]

From a Palestinian - I know this is long but read it anyways:

If any leftists on this fucking site are using antisemitism to further the Free Palestine movement, you're not fucking helping. Not just because there are Jewish Palestinians. Not just because it furthers the idea that the movement is rooted in antisemitism. And not just because the people who are ultimately going to be impacted by this "activism" are Palestinian families (like my own), who will be on the receiving end of the brunt of government retaliation. It simply isn't helpful and isn't right.

Gaza is an open-air prison, cut off from food and water and medicine and fuel. Even before this recent chapter of the conflict, its people are penned in and brutalized and kidnapped and imprisoned and murdered, without any true relief, and very often without mainstream attention. This is being carried out by the government of Israel (with US government support) and its military, and it is aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, a people without any formal military or power. Palestinians in the country are being slaughtered, and Palestinians outside of the country are slowing losing their connection to their identity and homeland and need to watch as their brethren are unilaterally labeled as terrorists and "animals" and killed, raped and buried in rubble.

As a movement we need to acknowledge that Hamas is an antisemitic force. There is no justifying it or going around it. Internet leftists, you're so good at nitpicking at the past comments of online allies and finding the problematic thing someone said on twitter in 2018 and then never defending them again no matter what. But we can't do the same here with Hamas when leaders in the party are antisemitic and when people are dead? We need to defend Jewish people and that doesn't stop here. And nobody dare try to explain to me that this is what a revolution looks like. Those killed weren't all IDF soldiers. And don't explain to me that even colonization and occupation is violence (especially if you live in the US, a colonized nation stolen from indigenous people), because of course I understand that. Palestine has a right to defend itself against violence, but Hamas is explicitly antisemitic and we can't just stand against the ruthless killing of civilians only when it's Palestinian civilians.

Yes, it's complicated. YES this violence and the power vacuums that allow groups like Hamas to take power are very often the response to brutality, and a long-term symptom in the aftermath of European imperialism. We can acknowledge that and understand that and even be sympathetic to the historical context that allows this to unfold while still condemning the death of civilians. After all, being against the death of civilians is at the core of the Free Palestine movement.

Defending Jewish people does NOT mean dismissing the slaughter and literal genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Defending Jewish people does not mean defending the actions of the Israeli government. And standing with Palestine and freeing it from brutality does NOT mean ignoring that antisemitism is fraught in the world to this day. One part of why Israel is able to garner civilian support despite the atrocities of its government is because not many other countries are taking in refugees of antisemitism, and historically most countries have never protected Jewish people EVER. That is something we need to acknowledge. And acknowledging that does not mean we justify the actions of the government of Israel, and it does not mean we are turning a blind eye to the occupation or the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians.

BTW, tone-policing Palestinians about how they talk about Israel while we are in mourning, and collectively witnessing the brutality our loved ones are facing, and literally watching our homeland get destroyed IS HORRIBLE. IT IS UNHELPFUL. IT IS INSENSITIVE AND TONE DEAF. Do not bring up Hamas in my fucking inbox, MY PEOPLE ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED AND LIKENED TO ANIMALS AND I AM FORCED TO WATCH.

The same applies to tone-policing Jewish people when they are getting death threats at synagogues and JCCs and/or are mourning loved ones in Israel. Yelling "but what about Palestine" whenever a Jewish person in America (who has literally nothing to do with the heinous acts of a foreign government entity) mentions they are grieving or afraid or getting death threats doesn't fucking do anything. This isn't activism.

We are all tired. We are all traumatized. We will feel this for generations.